JVC DLA-X70R Special Features 2

Posted on March 27, 2012 By Art Feierman

CFI - Creative Frame Interpolation

When it comes to JVC’s CFI note that it does not possess one of the rare, really smooth ones out there, despite the X70R having five separate modes. First of all I find Modes 1 and 2 cause some jittering when watching many Blu-ray discs. For example, on The Fifth Element, the Main menu (play, scene selection, etc.) bounces around nastily.. . I would suggest CFI 3 or 4, which I had no such trouble with. They seem to be the smoothest and cause the least problems as I watched. I watched a variety of sports, mostly March Madness Basketball. I settled on the number 3 setting for the CFI. with the JVC X70 and I thought that was fine. Personally, I can live without CFI, but think it’s a nice touch. Therefore, don’t worry too much about the JVC’s CFI performance, which, while not the best, is acceptable. Note please: I don’t explore all those CFI modes closely, consider these casual observations, play with them yourself, see which you prefer.

Click Image to Enlarge

JVC e-Shift and "4K" resolution

I can’t say I like JVC calling their e-Shift technology 4K resolution. I understand what they are doing, and I can see some benefit, some downside. Mostly, though having the e-Shift is a good thing. The bad thing is branding it 4K resolution, which will only lead to consumer confusion. Don’t worry though, JVC will have help – lots of it, from the various LCDTV manufacturers, who are starting to call things 4K, that are also not true 4K, nor is what they are doing similar to what JVC’s talking about with e-Shift.

e-Shift, makes the almost invisible pixel structure of JVC’s LCoS chips essentially invisible. Now for a 100″ screen, you’ll have get within about 2 feet to see any pixel structure instead of 5 or 6 feet back.

Panasonic for years has had SmoothScreen. It’s done differently, but also does at least one thing similarly: It makes the pixels more invisible at normal seating distances.

This JVC can’t accept any 4K source material. It basically takes 1080p (1920×1080), and fires twice, 1920×1080 the first time, then shifts the image about 1/2 pixel diagonally, and repeats the process. That blurs the image, and spreads out the light to where the pixel mask is, thus the lower pixel visibility.

I think JVC’s got a good thing here, except for pitching it as 4K.

Thus, JVC is addressing 4K, but they are merely overlapping pixels. Even if JVC could accept 4K, it wouldn’t provide the sharpness and detail of a true 4K projector like Sony’s VPL-VW1000ES (which I’m dying to review).

Bottom line. The JVC appears a touch sharper, than the Epson 5010, which seems sharp for a 3LCD based projector. Strangely, I haven’t had a single good DLP home theater projector here, the whole time I’ve had this JVC. Would have been nice to see if the JVC can hold its own with one of those. Even the BenQ W7000 would have been a good contest, but they missed each other by a week. For all the hype of 4K, I’d be really surprised if several razor sharp 1080p single chip DLP projectors don’t seem sharper. Just think though, that the JVC X70 is probably about as sharp as any 1080p LCoS or 3LCD projector gets.

Manual Iris

This iris allows you to lower your overall brightness, and improve contrast (yes, black levels), if you don’t need the iris fully open for brightness.